April 28, 2016

Road Show

Next up on your rebuilding project is what I call a "road show".

Here's what you do. You craft a presentation, about thirty slides, that depict the tepid performance of the business over the past decade. Your business has done what every vendor wants your business to do, and guess what? Only the vendors won! You exchanged money for thought leadership resulting in utterly tepid results.

It is time to switch momentum ... from vendors ... to your business.

Over the next month, it is your job to visit every department at your company. Yes, every one. You will bring your Brand Response Marketing Team with you on this presentation. You will introduce your team as "the future of customer acquisition". Then you will make your case as to why every effort your company tried over the past decade resulted in utterly tepid results. You will share that your annual repurchase rate is just 37%. You will share the fact that without significant customer acquisition growth at a low cost, your business will continue to plod along with utterly tepid performance.

You will teach every employee in every department why customer acquisition is the most important thing they will work on in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

You will teach every employee why it will take until 2018 for their customer acquisition ideas to bear fruit.

You will tell every employee to work through your Brand Response Marketing Team ... if they have ideas, they go to this team.

You will tell every employee that you will hold a quarterly webcast, where you and the Brand Response Marketing Team will share results of offline/digital customer acquisition efforts. When your social media manager raises a hand and calls you a Luddite and suggests that the event should be on Periscope, go ahead and give the manager credit, and ask him to do the work to make it happen. Put people to work.Yes, when somebody raises a hand and gets snotty and tells you why your ideas aren't going to work, put that person to work - if that person has solutions, make that person immediately accountable for his/her proposed solution. The person has just been drafted to your Brand Response Marketing Development System.

You will tell every employee that if their ideas are implemented and are successful, they will be paid a $2,500 bonus out of the marketing budget. You will clear this idea with your Human Resources team ahead of time, of course. But who would you rather pay ... your own employees ... or a printer / paper rep? You already know which answer is right.

Go out on the road.

Visit every single employee in your company.

Give every employee the opportunity to craft a credible offline/digital customer acquisition strategy.

Compensate every employee with spot bonuses, if necessary. It's worth it, when you measure performance on an ROI basis, right? If the idea pays for itself, shouldn't a share of the profit go to the person who had the idea?

If you truly want to rebuild the customer acquisition program at your company, reduce your catalog marketing budget by the exact amount required to pay employee bonuses for great customer acquisition ideas. Flip the narrative ... from paying vendors ... to paying your own employees.

Kevin Hillstrom

Kevin Hillstrom, President, MineThatData

Kevin is President of MineThatData, a consultancy that helps CEOs understand the complex relationship between Customers, Advertising, Products, Brands, and Channels. Kevin supports a diverse set of clients, including internet startups, thirty million dollar catalog merchants, international brands, and billion dollar multichannel retailers. Kevin is frequently quoted in the mainstream media, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Forbes Magazine.

Prior to founding MineThatData, Kevin held various roles at leading multichannel brands, including Vice President of Database Marketing at Nordstrom, Director of Circulation at Eddie Bauer, and Manager of Analytical Services at Lands' End.

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